


The Lesser of Man

by infidi



Series: New Earth Chronicles [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 1x13 spoilers, Bellarke, F/M, first person narrative fails, is that their shipname?, mountain men, sounds like a fucking waterbased bird of prey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-14
Updated: 2014-06-14
Packaged: 2018-02-04 15:01:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1783234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infidi/pseuds/infidi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death is complicated. Death is hard and messy. It's the failure of survival with no relief or redemption. Clarke is beginning to understand that there is no winning or losing, only surviving-- The Mountain Men taught her that there are worse things than dying and those are still to come.</p>
<p>A continuation after 1x13. A slow burn at first, but heavy Bellarke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lesser of Man

**Author's Note:**

> Had this idea bouncing around in my head after the finale. I am the worst at writing first person and even worse and this specific type of narrative, so please excuse all the horrid tense shift issues. I am posting this rough without beta because I am just having a bit of fun and I doubt anyone will read it. 
> 
> Let me know though if you like it, want me to continue it and/or would prefer it in third person because I can always do a chapter one rewrite. Damn me for wanting to do something different.

     Death is like a fog. It appears with no announcement and blinds you. Fills your lungs with uncertainty and leaves you wandering in an unseeing mist between worlds, staggering. I was never foolish enough to believe that I would die of old age. Not even when I was tucked away on the Arc being spoon fed the chancellors lies and sleeping without the burdens that blanket me now. I always knew it would be murder—that my death would be at the hand of someone else. In the end, I guess I was right.

     It’s been two weeks, I think. Days tend to bleed together in this place and I am slowly losing my grip of reality. I’ll awake and rip the tubes from my arms and pace the room. Search for ways out, try to talk to Monty or Jasper or scream for anyone but I wake just the same hours later and repeat. I am not sure if any of it is real anymore. Are they drugging me? How do they get in and out of the room? I dream of Finn, but it’s different now than it was before. There is no soft touch or smile in his eyes but haunting screams and his head twisted and mutated from the fire blast.

     I wake up. My feet on the floor. Cold. I rip the IV out and trace the wound, there is no pattern or scar from the old one and I am not sure if I am awake or if I am asleep. The sign out the door says Mount Weather and Anya had warned of the Mountain Men. Was this their doing or was this death? I hear sounds sometimes, not groans of pain or torture, but whispers and scribbles like on a chalkboard.

     If Bellamy were here he would know what to do, he would have a plan. Even if it was something as stupid as fighting or not falling back asleep. Monty isn’t in the window across the hall and I wonder if he ever was, if it was just another trick the mind can play or if he too perhaps is dealing with this never ending cycle of sleep and floor and trapped inside these four walls. I lie back on the bed and close my eyes and wonder if this truly is death then it is more cruel than I could have ever imagined.

 

     The words fade in and out, like tuning a radio.

     “Princess— Clarke,” It says.

     Beneath my eyelids I feel a touch of heat and I lean in, it’s almost like coming home.

     “I can carry her, just get the door,” The voice grunts, “We don’t have any time left.”

     I’m flying and warm. I imagine that if the cycle of death I just endured was over then this surely was heaven, but not even I am as lucky to find that kind of relief from life.

     “Clarke, we don’t have time for this,” The voice hisses. My world shakes and I open my eyes to not the white cage I’d been bound to, but an endless hallway bathed in red light and the heated gaze of my savior, Bellamy Blake.

     “W-what’s going on?” I ask, “Bellamy how-”

     I’m set down and leaned against the wall. His fingers trace my face for a moment before they grip my skull and force my gaze to anchor to his. His expression is inked with exhaustion and doubt.

     “Listen up Princess, this was meant to be a prison break but things are not looking too good on our end,” Bellamy says.

     His voice wavers and I know it’s bad. I look him over and he’s bloodied but still standing. No guns, but he is wearing a new vest of some kind I have never seen before. I reach out to touch it, but he grabs it instead and pulls me along. I stumble as he drags me down corridors, he’s whispering into something in his hand and fuzzily in the back of my mind I think of how all the walkie-talkies burned in the ambush.

     His grip on me tightens as we round another corner and there is a shuffle at the end of the long hall. For the first time I see a real glimpse at these mountain men, they look like doctors. In their white coats with their hair slicked back and eyes bright and calculating. Bellamy is fast though, better than them—he grabs from his vest at a can of something and throws it towards the small gathering of white coats and it stutters and hisses showering them in sparks.

     His hand is on my waist this time, almost carrying me against as we rush towards another doorway. This must surely be another one of my dreams, I so rarely dream of Bellamy. Never this detailed and never do I get his smell right, I breathe in but it smells like sweat and dirt and the sterile equipment they use in this place. We stop suddenly and I almost run into a wall. I hear the hum of the lights above and I look to see Lincoln sitting in the ceiling tiles. This is quite possibly the weirdest of all the dreams I’ve had so far, usually when I dream about Lincoln he’s dying and I’m trying to stop the bleeding but I can’t find the source. He looks healthy right now, if not a little annoyed and heated.

     I open my mouth to speak, but I can’t because Bellamy has wrapped his hand around my mouth firmly and is speaking to Lincoln in hushed voices. Out of the corner of my eye I see Bellamy twirl his finger around his ear before pointing at me and I should know what that means and I feel offended but he just rolls his eyes before turning me to face him again.

     “You gotta keep real quite princess, we’re almost there,” He says. His eyes jump from my face up to Lincoln before giving him a nod.

     Lincoln leans down from the ceiling and gives a deadlock grip on my arms and begins to hoist me up into the rafters. I just finish rolling around on my stomach when Bellamy finishes climbing up dusting off his jacket and new vest.

     “I took out two more cameras, but they have to know where we are. We can’t let them figure out where we end up,” He says.

     It’s hard to keep up with them, not being able to run in dreams and all, but we eventually make our way out through a network-like tunnel towards daylight, real sunlight. Lincoln leads us out and up into the world.

     “I don’t want to wake up,” I say breathing in the smell of the pine trees and autumn air. I hear a frustrated sigh from Lincoln.

     “We don’t have time for this!”

     “Clarke, come on!” Bellamy calls out, grabbing at my wrist again. This time I shake free of his grip.

     “This is my escape. My dream. Why can’t just let me have this?” I bellow. “It’s all I have left.”

     “Clarke, this isn’t a dream. You’re awake,” Bellamy replies. He grabs my arm again tighter than before and with one quick fluid motion scraps his blade across my skins slicing me just below my elbow.

     I feel the pain and watch as the small trickle of blood runs down my arm. I'm a sorted mix of confused, elated and horrified. This is real, my reality has finally come and I am the one who is still stuck in fantasy. I look up from my wound into the panic of the scene before me, grasping Bellamy’s hand tightly.

     “Where is everyone else?” I choke out.

     “It’s just you Princess—you’re all we could get out.”

     “I don’t understand, why now. You should’ve waited a little bit longer, planned and then-”

     “Clarke!” Bellamy shouts. “You’ve been in there a month, we did plan. This was our plan.”

      _A month._ Not two weeks. I have been in purgatory almost the same time that we have been on the ground. I see the impatient and nervous look Lincoln keeps casting over Bellamy’s shoulder and understand the magnitude of the apparent truce or whatever was occurring. I have missed a lot.

     “What’s the plan now?” I ask.

     “Now, we run.”

     And we do.

 

 

 

 


End file.
